WASHINGTON -- The airlines should be planning something special in the way of a celebration in 1960 -- it marks the 30th anniversary of the airline stewardess.
It was in 1930 that Boeing Airlines (later to become United Airlines) hired the first cabin attendant in commercial aviation.
The idea was born in the mind of a Boeing official who was on a rough flight from San Francisco to Reno, Nev. The pilot and copilot were busy trying to keep the wings level, so the official took over their job of handing out coffee and sandwiches to anyone still well enough to swallow.
Why not, thought the official, hire Stewarts to perform this chore?
He passed this suggestion on to Boeing's top brass. But the brass were busy pondering another suggestion -- this one from a young San Francisco nurse named Ellen Church. She had proposed that the airline hire nurses as flight attendants, because of the airsickness problem.
Boeing put the ideas together and took the plunge. It told Miss Church to hire nurses for the San Francisco-Chicago run on a three-month trial basis. She was to observe certain standards: each girl was to be no more than 25 years old, weigh, no more than 115 pounds or be taller than 5'4". The salary would be $150 a month for 100 hours of flying. (The average stewardess now earns about $300 for flying 80 hours a month.)
If management was skeptical, the pilots were stunned and furious. Adding a woman to the crew, they argued, was about as sensible as removing one of the wings. But the trial period was ordered anyway. To everyone's surprise except Miss Church's, the stewardess plan was a huge success.
There was something about the uniformed girls going about their business calmly and efficiently that made male passengers (air trips in those days were about 98 per cent male) feel ashamed of being afraid. And fear of flying was the biggest handicap the infant airline industry had to combat.
As the airlines expanded, the supply of registered nurses who also were willing to fly for a living became somewhat short. By the 1940's, most airlines had waived the nurse requirement (Trans-Canada Airlines was the last carrier to drop the rule, in 1957). Also, the airlines were setting up their own stewardess training schools in the realization that a girl could be an efficient cabin attendant without needing the medical knowledge of a nurse. And finally, airsickness was becoming rarer.
Today, there are about 8,000 stewardesses working for the domestic airlines. Their jobs are officially deemed essential by the Civil Aeronautics Board whose regulations include a provision that every plane carrying 10 or more passengers must have a flight attendant. Their two- to four-week training courses include emergency procedures as well as passenger service.
Most airlines call their girls stewardesses, but a few refer to them as hostesses. Until a few years ago, they had to quit if they got married but a couple of airlines, plagued by the stewardess turnover problem, are letting a few girls who married pilots stay on the job. The average stewardess lasts only about 26 months with an airline, the majority of them leaving to get married.
Ellen Church, the nurse who started the whole thing, flew with United for only a year and a half. She is now administrator of the Union Hospital in Terre Haute, Ind.
Pilots, who once put stewardesses in the same category as engine failure, now concede the girls are a vital part of commercial aviation. They will play jokes on new "stews" (such as the captain who got the LaGuardia Airport public address system to broadcast that "Stewardess Jones is loaded and ready for immediate departure"), but they have a healthy respect for their feminine crew members.
Pilots Know Story
Almost every pilot, for example, knows the story of Stewardess Mary Frances Housley of National Airlines.
She was working a Flight on a DC -4 that crashed while landing at Philadelphia in 1951. The plane caught fire. The official Civil Aeronautics Board report on the accident contains these words:
"One pilot escaped through the front cargo door, the other through the sliding cockpit window. Their attempts to assist the stewardess, still in the cabin, with the evacuation of the passengers were unsuccessful due to the intense heat already existing in the area of the main cabin exit, which prevented them from getting close to it. The stewardess, who opened the main cabin door, advised everyone to remain calm and rendered the utmost assistance to all, was highly praised by the passengers who escaped for her courageous efforts."
Rescue workers later found the body of Stewardess Mary Frances Housley in the charred cabin. She never even tried to get out.
